Depressing news: hints that we are not still far from "full employment" and thus have little room to grow rapidly: Rob Valletta and Nathaniel Barlow: The Prime-Age Workforce and Labor Market Polarization: "U.S. labor force participation by people in their prime working years fell substantially... and it remains depressed...
...Some observers have suggested that the weak labor force attachment reflected in the low participation rate indicates that the labor market has not yet recovered from the recession... in particular... the lower participation rate of “prime-age” individuals.... Unusual factors are at play.... One key factor is labor market “polarization,” or the slow disappearance of jobs that traditionally have been in the middle of the wage and skill distribution. This has been a sustained trend over the past few decades that extends beyond the ups and downs of the business cycle. Our analysis of state-level data suggests that about half or more of the decline in prime-age participation since the year 2000 is attributable to the disappearance of manual labor positions in manufacturing and other industries—a key feature of labor market polarization...
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